In the semiconductor packaging industry, thermocompression bonding (TCB) includes flip chip processes that are slow to be adopted, and may not be adopted widely, if the productivity of such processes does not improve. Conventional capillary flow underfilling of semiconductor dice is considered not possible on certain devices (e.g., devices having greater than 4 layers). To underfill a semiconductor die during die stacking a “Non Conductive Film” (NCF) may be used. Other commonly used names for NCF are “underfill film” (UF) or “wafer applied underfill film” (WAUF). A challenge with this material is that the film tends to gets “tacky” at relatively low temperatures. Once the film gets tacky the die handover from a transfer tool (e.g., the picker or pick tool) to the place/bonding tool tends to become unreliable. To avoid such handover issues the film temperature at the handover process is desirably at a point well below the temperature where the film starts to be tacky while in contact with the transfer tool; however, this low temperature requires extensive heating and cooling ramps that required time and energy.
Thus, it would be desirable to provide improved bonding machines and methods of operating the bonding machines.